Ace Attorney Case Files: Turnabout Sisters

This episode of Ace Attorney Case Files will cover the first real case of the series, Turnabout Sisters. It's early enough that I won't bother giving a spoiler warning, although you should probably stop reading if you'd rather go in blind.

Prologue

Like with the first case, you see the crime in process, including the murderer's identity. The only other time a second case does this is the second case of Dual Destinies.

As for the victim, she happens to be none other than Phoenix's mentor, Mia Fey. While this isn't quite the end of Mia's role in the game, it's still a bit disappointing that she was killed off so early on, since her death might have had more impact if it happened later.

Investigation Day 1

Technically, this takes place over two nights and a day, and begins immediately after Mia's murder. You take the opportunity to examine the crime scene and speak with Mia's younger sister Maya, before a woman with pink hair calls the police from the window of the hotel across the street. The police arrive, and Detective Dick Gumshoe arrests Maya on suspicion of killing her sister.

Talking with Maya, Phoenix learns that while her sister saw his potential, she wasn't ready to entrust Maya's fate to Phoenix just yet. As such, Phoenix follows Maya's request and asks Mia's old mentor Marvin Grossberg for help, only for Grossberg to adamantly refuse. In a rather blatant example of a Chekhov's Gun, Grossberg briefly mentions the painting on the wall and how dear it is to him.

The job of defending Maya to Phoenix, and he sets out to investigate the crime to find proof of Maya's innocence. This is a rather daunting task considering that the prosecution usually goes out of its way to prevent witnesses from talking to Phoenix, thus hindering his ability to investigate. Despite this, Gumshoe's loose lips clues Phoenix in to the existence of a witness- April May. Phoenix goes to speak with May, and finds that she's a rather ditzy woman... with a wiretap in her drawer. She's clearly not as innocent as she seems, although whether she's smarter than she looks is debatable. The player also happens upon a bellhop, whose name is never revealed at any point, who proves a bit more helpful, albeit unintentionally so.

Trial Day 1

As a bit of a tradition, the first witness is Gumshoe, the detective responsible for the case. Despite his incompetence, and occasional contradictions in his testimony, Gumshoe isn't suspicious at all.

May then takes the stand. Despite being obviously two-faced, being caught in several lies on stand (curiously enough, perjury is never punished in the Ace Attorney universe) and being guilty of the crime of wiretapping, she is not the actual culprit. Instead, the bellhop helps establish that another person stayed in her hotel room, and was not present at the time of the murder. This is an interesting twist, but it would have been more effective if the player didn't already know the culprit's identity.

Investigation Day 2

Phoenix does some digging and realizes that there's a mastermind behind the crime, one powerful enough to frighten May into silence, prevent other attorneys from taking Maya's case and "convince" Grossberg to part with his valued painting. That person is Redd White, a man who has successfully acquired blackmail material on many people, giving him incredible power. Only Mia Fey was a threat to him, which resulted in her murder.

When you first meet with White, you can immediately recognize him as Mia's killer. Sharp-eyed players, like Phoenix, will also notice Grossberg's painting in his office(there's a lot of one-of-a-kind items in the Ace Attorney universe, so it's always considered suspicious when one of those is seen somewhere it shouldn't be). Unfortunately for Phoenix, he thinks it would be a good idea to accuse a powerful blackmailer of murder to his face, even after said blackmailer assaulted him as proof that he could get away with it. White then calls in a favor with the Chief Prosecutor, agrees to testify and orders Phoenix arrested.

Incidentally, the entire "chief prosecutor" scene is somewhat confusing. Some people think it's a plot hole, since Lana Skye, the chief prosecutor introduced in Rise From The Ashes, is a woman, but Lana and this person have two different titles in Japanese. He also probably isn't Bansai Ichiyanagi(Blaise Debeste in the fan translation of the second Investigations game), the prosecutor who gave Manfred von Karma his only penalty and another rather corrupt and powerful individual.

Trial Day 2

Phoenix mentions that in the legal system depicted in this game, trials take no more than three days- usually wrapping up in one- and almost always end in a guilty verdict. Apparently, this is an only slightly exaggerated version of the Japanese court system, which has a rather suspicious 99.9% conviction rate.

So Phoenix, a rookie lawyer on his second case, is tasked with defending himself against a ruthless undefeated prosecutor, as well as a culprit who has the judge and law enforcement officials in his pocket. This sounds like a hopeless situation, doesn't it?

Well, it would be, if White weren't so incompetent. Despite the fact that May was both his employee and accomplice, he didn't double-check her account, and ends up accidentally describing Mia's movements before her murder in such a way that proves he was in her office at the time of the crime. Only some last-minute coaching from Edgeworth saves him by getting him to confess to wiretapping Mia, and claiming that he saw the broken glass stand during that time. All seems lost, until Maya inadvertently channel's her sister's spirit.

Mia then shows up and essentially wins the trial for Phoenix from this point on. She points out that the piece of paper with Maya's name on it was a receipt for a $1,000 glass stand, which she bought the day before her murder (whereas White claimed to have been in her office at the start of the month, several days before the murder). White's guilt is all but proven, until he asks for the trial to be extended another day. Mia then has Phoenix read a list of names, and threatens to reveal White's guilt unless he confesses. It's karmic justice for the blackmailer, but it's more than a little anticlimactic.

Conclusion

The Ace Attorney series was still finding its way when Turnabout Sisters was made, and it shows. While it ties into the DL-6 storyline of the main game, the villain's fairly one-dimensional, and his motivation- killing Mia to prevent her from bringing his criminal activity to light- is rather straightforward. The case occasionally relies on characters acting stupidly, and Maya channeling Mia is a borderline deus ex machina that brings the trial to an anticlimactic end. It also would have probably been better to have this case a little later on in the game, after letting Mia get more screentime and development. Nevertheless, this is a step up from the first case that helps raise the stakes and establish the overarching plot, so it's a decent second case.